美國最佳CEO的成功秘訣

當“蘋果教父”喬布斯逝世后，許多人都在揣測誰會是下一個標志性的企業領袖。今年4月的美國權威財經雜志《福布斯》就給出了一個答案。全球最大在線零售商亞馬遜的創始人杰夫·貝佐斯成為了《福布斯》評選的美國績效排名第一的首席執行官。

“毫無疑問，史蒂夫·喬布斯的逝世讓他成為別人最想見、模仿、崇拜的公司首席執行官。”《福布斯》如此評價。而作為公認的“電子商務教父”、全球網店的偶像，貝佐斯的個人魅力和領導風格帶給我們的是更多的啟發。

Hello， my name is Jeff Bezos. I started Amazon. com about 15 years ago. Tons of stories from the early days…

We started the company in my house. We didn’t have enough electric power in the house at the certain point. We only had about four employees then， but we already had enough computers and computer servers. We had to string these big， orange， electric 1)extension cords from every room in the house to get enough power into the room where the office was. So we are basically…all the 2)circuit breakers were flipping. We couldn’t plug a vacuum cleaner in anywhere without flipping all the circuit breakers. So we finally had to move to a real office.

W h e n w e launched the store， we made a bunch of other mistakes over time， but we’ve learned a lot. My whole body’s covered in scar tissue.

We initially programmed a bell to ring every time we got an order. And I’m very pleased to say that within the first 30 days of doing business that bell got annoying. So we had to turn it off. It was a great moment when we were examining every order that would come into Amazon. And it was always a family member placing the order. And the first order we got from a stranger， I remember， you know， there were probably a half dozen or ten of us in the company at that time were all gathered around after the bell rang and looking at the order and we were like， “Is that your Mom?” “That’s not my Mom.” And…and thus it began.

A lot has happened over the last 15 years. As I said， we’ve made a lot of mistakes， we learned some things. I wanna tell you everything I know.

Alright， well the first thing I know is that you need to obsess over customers. I can tell you that we have been doing this from the very beginning， and it’s the only reason that Amazon.com exists today in any form. We’ve always put customers first. When given the choice of obsessing over competitors or obsessing over customers， we always obsess over customers. We pay attention to what our competitors do， but it’s not where we put our energy， it’s not where we get our motivation from. We really like to start with customers and work backwards. And again， that is the key thing that I know and it covers a lot of other mistakes.

That second thing I know， is invent. Anytime we have a problem， we never accept either/or thinking. We try to figure out a solution that gets both things， and that often requires invention. But you can invent your way out of any box if you believe that you can. And what we talk about is inventing on behalf of customers. It’s not a customer’s job to invent a…for themselves. You need to listen to customers， it’s critical. But they won’t tell you everything， and so you need to invent on their behalf. And that focus on invention has served us well. Some of the recent things， even 3)Kindle， not just Kindle， but 4)EC2， the Elastic Compute Cloud. These are things we would have never gotten to if we didn’t have an inventive culture.

And then， think long-term. This is really critical. And it’s actually much rarer than you might think. I find that most of the initiatives we undertake may take five to seven years before they pay any 5)dividends for the company. So that ability to think in sort of five years and seven-year time frames really is very very useful for us， and I…and it’s definitely one of the things that I know. It requires， by the way， and allows a willingness to be misunderstood. We’ve been called 6)Amazon. toast， Amazon.con， many different things， many of them not appropriate for a video.

Alright， I know one more thing and I’ll save it for the end. It’s always Day 1. There’s always more invention in the future， always more customer innovation， new ways to obsess over customers. Thank you.

大家好，我是杰夫·貝佐斯。15年前我創建了亞馬遜，創業初期發生的糗事多不勝數……

最初公司就設在我家里，可是那時家里的電壓不足。我們當時只有四名員工，但我們已經有足夠多的電腦和服務器了。我們得在家里的每個房間布上這些粗大的橘色的電延長線，將足夠的電引進我們的辦公室。因此，我們基本上……所有電閘都跳來跳去。我們在哪兒都不能插上吸塵器，否則所有的電閘都會跳掉。所以，最后，我們不得不換個正規點的辦公室。

我們的網上商店上線后，我們一路犯了很多其他的錯誤，但我們也獲得了很多寶貴的經驗。我可謂是數歷磨難了。

剛開始時，我們設了個響鈴裝置，一旦有訂單，鈴就會響。我很高興地說，在開張后的頭30天里那鈴聲就變得煩人了。我們不得不關掉它。核對每一張向亞馬遜發來的訂單的時候，都是我們最開心的時刻。但那總是我們的某個家人下的訂單。